Choose your base

Quick overview:

A large group game that is great for lower secondary school young people and primary school. This gamerequires very little set up but does require a bit of space.

Game type:

Focuser/Energiser

Participants:

15+

This game requires a minimum of 2 leaders

Supplies you’ll need:

None.

Running choose your base:

To begin, gather all of your group in the middle of the room/ field.

One of the leaders explains that the group is about to play ‘choose your base’. For this game, the leader first needs to explain that there will be several bases that the young people will need to choose from.

These bases can be anything from corners of the room to certain point in a field. The only pre-requisite is that the bases have enough room for several people to gather at comfortably. We recommend having between 3 and 5 bases. Once you have chosen the bases we strongly suggest naming them as it makes it much easier later in the game

Once the bases have been allocated, explain that every round they will need to choose a base and move over to it in a set style. Several examples of things you could ask them to imitate are: a dinosaur, a robot, a particular dance style, a chicken, a monkey, a train, a martial artist/ninja, slow motion, their favourite farm animal.

Explain that every round, you will give them a different thing to choose a base as. They must then individually choose a base that they will go to while the second leader either leaves the area or closes their eyes. Once the leader who can still see the group sees that all the young people have chosen a base they must then call out loudly to the second leader asking them to choose one of the bases.

The second leader the loudly replies ‘I choose [NAME OF BASE]’ while still being unable to see the rest of the group and what base different people have chosen. The reason this conversation is done loudly is so that all the young people can.

The young people at the base which the second leader chooses are now out of the game and do not compete in future rounds. Make sure you keep them involved by having them all sat together near the middle to make a drum roll every time the second leader is choosing a base to knock out.

At the end of a round, after a base has been chosen, call everyone back into the middle. If people have been knocked out, have them to sit down together.

When numbers begin to get low or you need to finish the game quickly a very easy way to finish is to announce at the start of the next round that to decide who the winners will be, the base which is chosen next time will be the winners instead of the losers of that round. These winners are now the winners of your game.

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